Cluster H2020 Bioplastics
Upcycling Bio Plastics of food and drinks packaging
UPLIFT, upPE-T and PRESERVE are three EU-funded projects under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (topic CE-BIOTEC-09-2020 - Upcycling Bio Plastics of food and drinks packaging). In total, the three projects comprise 58 partners from 19 European countries with a total budget of 23.3 million Euro.
The aim of the cluster is to develop upcycling technologies that will allow sustainable recycling or biological degradation in accordance with existing and novel technologies, standards, and certification schemes.
The three projects started collaborating during May 2021 as they agreed on the importance of sharing knowledge and efforts to achieve the common objective of reducing plastics waste created by food packaging.
Activities performed
Starting from November 2022, the cluster set up three different working groups, deepening aspects on technical challenges, standardisation and policy. The objective is to join forces and expertise and deliver common conclusion to maximise the impact of the funded projects.
Read the latest news about the cluster.
Past events
Upcycling bio plastic of food & drink packaging – October 2021
Standardization in Plastics and Circular Economy – April 2022
About the projects
UPLIFT - Upcycling of PE and PET wastes to generate biodegradable bioplastics for food and drink packaging
The overall idea of UPLIFT is to biologically depolymerise bio- and fossil-based plastic packaging waste and convert it into more renewable and easily upcyclable polymers, following a biorefinery approach. UPLIFT will address the entire plastic packaging value chain, from monomer production to packaging material manufacturing and back to end of life reusing and recycling options.
UPLIFT has received €7,5 million funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 953073.
upPE-T - sUstainable PLastIcs for the Food and drink packaging indusTry
The upPE-T project will develop, through sustainable strategies, an alternative for plastic chemical degradation, turning PE and PET waste streams via enzymatic degradation and bioprocesses into raw material to produce biodegradable bioplastics. Finally, together with customers and food and drink /pand owners, bio-based end-packaging will be demonstrated and validated to ensure fast market deployment.
upPE-T has received €7.8 million funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 953214.
PRESERVE - High performance sustainable bio-based packaging with tailored end of life and upcycled secondary use
PRESERVE aims at boosting the circular use of bio-based packaging. To shift from the current situation (fossil-based, limited recycling), we build on award-winning upcycling strategies from past and on-going projects. We will enhance the performance of primary food packaging via bio-based barrier coatings for bioplastic and paper/board substrates, as well as via eBeam irradiation and microfi/pillar-reinforcement. From the biotechnological side, we will leverage the compounding of enzymes in bioplastics to stimulate biodegradation, the enzymatic recovery of functional oligomers and the delamination of multilayer packaging via enzymatic detergents to enable their layer separation and recycling.
PRESERVE has received €7,9 million funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 952983.